MARIETTA, Ga. — The USMNT will be without center backs Miles Robinson and Chris Richards when it faces Belgium on Saturday, coach Mauricio Pochettino said after both players missed training Friday.
Robinson, who suffered “a minor injury in his groin,” will miss Tuesday’s match against Portugal as well, with Richards more of a question mark.
“[Richards] played Thursday in Europe with [Crystal] Palace and then the club gave him permission to come to America and he reported Monday with some problems in his knee,” Pochettino said. “After we were assessing him, he was training [for] some part of the training Tuesday, did not finish Wednesday. He now feels something in his knee. We hope that it’s nothing important, but for tomorrow, [he] is out.”
Those absences will put more spotlight on a position that’s already a spot where things are wide open for the U.S. just two months out from naming a roster for the World Cup. Tim Ream, Mark McKenzie and Auston Trusty, the other three center backs named to the roster in March, now figure to start Saturday in the USMNT’s back three, though that is not necessarily guaranteed.
Pochettino has some options, and went out of his way to mention Friday that Joe Scally and Tanner Tessmann can shift to center back. Not only that, but it could be good to get them some time at the position as a test case — something Pochettino would rather do in a friendly than when games really count at the World Cup, for obvious reasons.
“When something wrong happens, like with what happened with Chris Richards, we need to see now,” Pochettino said. “We cannot, in an official competition say, ‘Oh we need to’ — you are done playing with the lineup or do some inventions.”
Expect to see a lot of players get time Saturday. A rule change at the end of February stipulated that teams can now get eight substitutions in international friendlies, and that the limit can be extended to 11 if the two teams agree on it beforehand.
That’s just what the U.S. and Belgium have done for Saturday’s match, with a decision yet to be announced for the game against Portugal on Tuesday.
Pochettino and the rest of the U.S. coaching staff participated in a jersey swap with Atlanta United coach Tata Martino and his coaching staff before the former’s press conference Friday. The two were teammates at Newell’s Old Boys in Argentina in the early 1990s.
“He’s one of my idols, my heroes,” Pochettino said of Martino, who managed Mexico at the 2022 World Cup.